


A Thousand Secret Names

by elmathelas



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmathelas/pseuds/elmathelas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom writes on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Secret Names

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at LJ 6/19/2004

_If I stood in Times Square for a year, maybe I would see you._ It’s a line from a poem he thinks he remembers, but no matter how many times he hears those words in his head, he can never seem to track down the original text—though it seems unlikely, too, that he composed them. Dom thinks of sitting in one spot for a year, time dilating and changing until the bodies seem to flow around him, and surely it is true—if you sat in Times Square for a full year, you might just have that person walk by you.

He remembers getting separated from his friends at concerts, in crowds, paths crossing in cities before they all had mobile phones, and the age old question. Do I stay in one place and wait for them, or do I walk around? And all the while wondering which option the others had chosen. It never seemed to work out. Thank heaven for mobiles.

Yet it’s really not an issue when it comes to Billy. If Dom sat in Times Square for a year, there’s a very real chance that Billy would not walk by him. Billy is not looking for him, and similarly, when Dom moves, he’s not looking for Billy.

There’s no need for him to look for Billy. Billy is not invisible, not by a long shot. With one quick sentence Dom could find him, with one cliché. _I’ll have my people call your people._ It’s appalling but true; it can be done though he’s never said the words. He’s never asked, because he made the last phone call, the last several phone calls, and Billy has never called back. At this point, it would be too obvious that it is Dom who is reaching for Billy, it’s been too long for a phone call from a friend (and not only a friend) to be a mere coincidence. 

They’d joked about it one time, tangled together one late morning when they’d somehow come to the subject of the grim far off future when they wouldn’t be working on the same film anymore. It had been Billy who’d been distressed by the idea, ironically enough, and Dom who had soothed him. _Now how could we ever be apart for long?_ he’d asked, thinking of the marvels of the modern world, phones and planes and all the rest. But Dom had liked the idea of a world without the convenience of a mobile phone, liked the idea of secret messages. _I’d write to you on my hands,_ he’d said, and Billy had laughed softly, already falling back to sleep. _That wouldn’t be a little obvious, would it?_ Dom had an answer ready, even knowing that as he spoke Billy was slipping into slumber, quick as a cat and sleeping just as soundly. _I could have a thousand secret names for you,_ he’d said—Billy had shifted against him, whether in response or in sleep Dom didn’t know, and it had struck him that the phrase rang as sacreligious somehow.

It doesn’t matter, now, because Dom’s never done it, never written a message to Billy on his hand, nor is he ever likely to. There’s no need for that kind of subterfuge when a simple string of numbers Dom still remembers would bring Billy’s voice back to him—at least for a moment.

When he writes on his hands and fingers it’s not for Billy, though it could be. The thousand secret names were never chosen, so the words he writes might well all be Billy’s, and he thinks this one night when he’s washing the ink away.  



End file.
